937.06     >>    *y\l  "r^—'fr^^^ 


THE 


Vol.  II  September  15,  1909  No.  1 


SEPTEMBER  CONTENTS 

THE  SOCIAL  DEMANDS  OF  MODERN  EDUCA- 
TION; Shall  Education  Equip  Men  as  Machines  or  as 
Citizens  of  an  Industrial  Society,  by  Prof.  Frank  T. 
Carlton. 

THE  PLANETESIMAL  THEORY  OF  THE  EARTHS 
ORIGIN,  by  May  Wood-Simons. 

SOCIAL  CONDITIONS  AND  THEORIES  IN  THE 
GRECO-ROMAN  WORLD,  by  Prof.  W.  A.  Old- 
father. 

AN  ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  AMERICAN 
HISTORY,  by  A.  M.  Simons. 

MEDICAL  INSPECTION  IN  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS,  by 
Prof.  Louis  W.  Rapeer. 

EDITORIAL — A  Crisis  in  Education — Some  Current  History. 


PDTONBQSmLLED/Jm  '80?feHSCM  CT 


PRICE  FIVE  CENTS 


JNIVERSITY  OF 

ILLINOIS  LIBRARY 

AT  URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 

CLASSICS 


Bound  Volumes 


Arrangements  have  been  made  to  furnish 
bound  copies  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Pro- 
gressive Journal  of  Education.  A  handsome 
binding  of  cloth  has  been  provided,  and  the 
workmanship  is  the  very  best. 


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prising Volume  I,  send  them  in,  together  with 
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You  will  want  a  complete  bound  set  of  the 
Progressive  Journal  for  the  first  year  of  its 
existence. 

Now  is  the  time  to  get  it 


LOCALS,  ATTENTION! 

Secretaries  of  locals  who  receive  this  number  of  the  Pro- 
gressive Journal  of  Education  are  asked  to  read  this  page  care- 
fully, to  consider  it  as  a  regular  communication  to  their  bodies 
and  to  read  it  and  put  it  up ,  for ,  action  at  the  next  regular 
meeting.  .„,/■  .  . 

TO  LOCAL  BODIES: 

The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education,  which  was  started 
last  fall,  is  now  a  year  old.  It  has  passed  out  of  the  experimental 
stage,  and  is  now  a  regularly  established  and  permanent  period- 
ical. It  is  now  a  finished  instrument,  ready  to  be  used  to  the 
fullest  by  its  friends  in  the  cause  of  human  enlightenment  and 
freedom. 

The  Progressive  Journal  in  its  one  brief  year  of  existence 
has  made  itself  widely  known  in  educational  circles.  Thousands 
of  copies  have  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  teachers.  So  clear 
and  ringing  and  truthful  have  been  the  articles  appearing  in  the 
Journal  that  hundreds  of  letters  have  been  received  expressing 
enthusiastic  approval  and  pledging  support.  So  you  see,  your 
magazine  has  proved  effective  from  the  first. 

In  the  coming  year  the  Journal  should  reach  ten  times  as 
many  teachers  as  it  did  in  1908-9.  Whether  it  does  or  not,  how- 
ever, depends  on  you. 

A  plan  has  been  devised  whereby  it  will  be  possible  for  you 
to  place  the  Journal  in  the  hands  of  every  teacher  in  your  com- 
munity. 

THIS  IS  THE  PLAN: 

Get  a  list  of  all  the  teachers  in  your  community. 
Then  take  up  a  collection  among  members  and 
sympathizers  to  raise  the  sum  of  15  cents  for  each 
name.  Send  the  money  in  and  the  Journal  will  be 
sent  FIVE  MONTHS  to  each  address.  If  it  is  im- 
possible to  raise  sufficient  money  at  once,  a  com- 
mittee may  be  appointed  to  solicit  funds,  or  an 
entertainment  may  be  given. 

This  special  rate  is  good  only  for  the  subscriptions  of  teach- 
ers or  school  officials  when  sent  in  by  locals.  Each  member, 
however,  should  be  a  subscriber.  The  following  special  rate  is 
offered : 

Subscriptions  of  members  when  sent  in  along 
with  a  bunch  of  15-cent  subscriptions  will  be  ac- 
cepted at  the  rate  of  THIRTY  CENTS  per  year. 

Official  action  should  be  taken  on  this  at  the  first  meeting, 
so  that  subscriptions  may  begin  with  the  September  number. 

No  more  effective  work  for  the  cause  can  be  done  than  this. 
Let  it  have 

YOUR  PROMPT  ACTION. 


OLD  FRIENDS— NEW  FRIENDS 

The  good  start  which  the  Progressive  Journal  made  in 
1908-9  depended  upon  its  old  friends.  Whatever  is  done  in  the 
year  1909-10  will  depend  upon  these  same  old  friends  and  upon 
the  new  friends  who  are  drawn  to  the  magazine.  But  to  its  new 
friends — those  who  have  not  yet  sent  in  a  club  of  subscribers — 
this  advertisement  is  especially  addressed.  To  show  you  how 
important  is  the  work  which  you  are  asked  to  do,  the  following 
letters  will  be  quoted  from  EDUCATORS  into  whose  hands  the 
Journal  has  been  placed  by  its  old  friends: 

O.  A.  Morton,  superintendent  of  to   enclose  another  dollar  for  two 

schools,      Marlboro,      Mass. — "The  more    subscriptions.     The   Journal 

Progressive   Journal   of   Education  is  just  what  is  needed." 

is  one  of  the  most  helpful  educa-  G    R    Davi      principal,   Amenia, 

tional  Journals  that  comes  to  my  N    D  _«It  is  re£eshing  to  find  an 

office,  and  the  only  one  that  I  read  educational  journal  with  some  real 

from    cover    to    coyer.      You    have  Hfe  to  it      j  ghall  do  aU  j  can  tQ 

some    able    contributors    that    are  bri                 magazine  to  the  notice 

broad    minded    and    thorough    in  Gf  other  educators." 
their     treatment     of     most     timely 

topics.  What  they  have  had  to  Florence  Schilling,  New  Con- 
say  has  been  from  somewhat  of  a  cord,  Ohio. — "I  am  a  teacher  in  an 
new  viewpoint,  which  is  important  elementary  school,  and  the  Pro- 
and  valuable  to  every  progressive  gressive  Journal  is  just  what  I 
school  man  throughout  the  land,  have  been  wishing  for." 
You  are  surely  doing  a  good  work  ^  .  ,,  0l  ,  , 
;«  ni„;«„  +wL  ™™~;«1  ;~  *.u~  C.  A.  Murray,  Staunton,  Ind. — 
han5,saoTfdu^to^SaZme    '"    **  "In  the  fourth  ^rade  history  class 

„     T      tt                              ,            ,  the   other   day   we    were    studying 

,      ,        ~^nt'    superintendent    of  the  population  of  Rome  just  prior 

schools,     Clinton,     Mass.— "I     am  to    Caesar's   time.     The   text-book 

pleased  with  the  Progressive  Jour-  taught  that  the  slaves  outnumbered 

nal   of  Education.     It  is   the   best  the  citizens  three  to  one.     I  asked 

much-m-httle    I   have   seen   for   a  how  it  was   possible  for  'the  few 

long  time.  to  control  so  many.'     One  of  the 

H.  S.  Youker,  superintendent  of  answers    was    this:      'Because    the 

schools,    Grand    Rapids,    Wis. — "I  slaves  then  didn't  have  any  more 

have  already  sent  in  two  subscrip-  sense  than  they  have   today.'     So 

tions   to   the  Journal.     I   am   glad  you  see  how  it  works." 

These  are  only  a  few  of  many  similar  letters.  Ten  times  as 
many  such  letters  will  be  received  in  1909-10  if  you  buckle  on  the 
harness  and  do  your  part. 

No  matter  whether  you  are  an  old  friend  or  a  new  friend, 
do  this  without  fail  in  the  next  three  days: 

Take  the  accompanying  subscription  blank  and 
fill  it  with  the  names  of  subscribers.  Six  names 
will  cost  only  $2.  If  you  can't  get  the  subscribers, 
pay  for  them  yourself.  You  owe  that  much  to  hu- 
man enlightenment  and  liberty. 

If  every  one  will  do  his  part  the  Progressive  Journal  of 
Education  will  quickly  become  such  a  power  in  the  educational 
world  that  it  will  bring  industrial  and  intellectual  freedom  at 
least  a  generation  nearer. 

FILL  OUT  THE  LIST. 


PROGRESSIVE  JOURNAL  OF  EDUCATION 

PEYTON  BOSWELL,  Editor  and  Publisher 

Subscription  Rates— Per  year,  50  cents;  in  clubs  of  six,  33%  cents;  in  clubs  of  forty,  25  cents. 

Bundle  Rates— Per  copy,  5  cents;  in  bundles  of  10  or  more,  VA.  cents;  four  to  one  address,  one 
year,  51.25;  ten,  one  year,  $2.75. 

Published  monthly  at  180  Washing-ton  Street,  Chicago,  U.  S.  A. 

Entered  as   second-class   matter   December  1,  1908,  at  the  postoffice   at  Chicago,  Illinois, 
under  the  act  of  March  3,  1879. 

VOL.  II.  SEPTEMBER   15,  1909  NO.  1 


The  Social  Demands  of  Modern 
Education 

Shall  Education  Equip  Men  as  Machines  or  as  Citizens 
of  an  Industrial  Society? 

By  Prof.  Frank  T.  Carlton, 
Albion  College. 

The  educational  field  is  not  a  peculiar  fenced-in  area,  separated 
from  other  social  sciences  by  distinct  lines  of  demarcation.  The 
great  problems  in  education  are  similar  in  origin  to  many  political 
and  economic  problems  of  the  day,  and  require  similar  treatment. 
Categorical  imperatives,  cultural  abstractions,  class  and  race  preju- 
dices, red  tape  and  the  dead  weight  of  the  authority  of  tradition 
have  no  more  place  in  education  than  in  the  political  or  the  eco- 
nomic field.  Like  the  questions  of  corporate  regulation  and  taxa- 
tion, of  pure  food  and  of  the  conservation  of  natural  resources,  the 
decision  as  to  the  proper  sphere  and  content  of  educational  work 
involves  a  delicate  adjustment  between  the  claims  of  society  and  of 
the  individual  members  of  society.  The  relative  weight  which 
should  be  given  these  two  more  or  less  conflicting  demands  is  far 
different  in  the  America  of  the  twentieth  century  than  in  the 
America  of  the  farmer  frontiersman.  It  is  here  unnecessary  to 
dwell  upon  the  many  obvious  and  hidden  industrial  and  social 
changes  of  recent  generations.  The  key  to  the  solution  of  educa- 
tional problems,  however,  will  be  found  only  through  a  careful  study 
of  these  transformations.  Recent  writers  and  investigators  have 
repeatedly  presented  the  concept  that  society,  in  a  much  larger 
measure  than  any  given  individual,  is  responsible  for  the  existence 
of  dislike  of  school  work,  inefficiency,  ill-health  and  criminality 
among  the  children  of  the  nation. 


2  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

More  vital  to  the  American  people  than  tariff  revision,  work- 
ingmen's  insurance,  child  labor  legislation,  pure  food  laws  or  the 
conservation  of  natural  resources  is  the  conservation  and  efficient 
utilization  of  the  ability  and  energy  of  the  boys  and  girls  of  the 
land.  In  the  light  of  modern  social  and  industrial  progress,  the 
proper  evaluation  of  educational  methods  and  ideals  is  a  basic 
social  need.  Modern  sociology,  repudiating  the  implications  of  the 
classical  economists,  is  making  man,  not  property,  the  center  of  its 
system.  Human  rights  are  held  to  be  primary;  property  rights, 
secondary.  The  maintenance  of  a  standard  of  living  is  at  least  as 
important  and  as  commendable  as  the  acquisition  of  additional  dol- 
lars. Society  from  this  higher  viewpoint  sees  a  new,  yet  old,  vision. 
It  reads,  as  if  in  large  type,  that  the  greatest  wealth  of  any  nation 
is  bound  up  in  its  citizenship;  and  its  citizenship  is  chiefly  a  social 
product. 

If  it  is  held  up  in  the  foreground  and  allowed  to  obscure  the 
vision,  the  presentation  of  abstract  educational  ideals  and  values  is  a 
futile  process,  a  mere  pleasing,  soul-soothing  balm.  The  funda- 
mental educational,  as  well  as  political  and  economic,  problem  re- 
lates to  the  development  of  healthy,  vigorous,  efficient,  normal  mem- 
bers of  society.  The  great  problem  of  the  present  era  is  to  uni- 
versalize opportunity  for  decent,  healthy  and  comfortable  living;  it 
is  to  give  each  and  every  child  the  heritage  of  a  child — decent  home 
surroundings,  sufficient  and  suitable  food,  opportunity  to  play,  and 
a  chance  to  use  hands  and  brains  in  some  form  of  constructive  work. 
The  solution  of  this  basic  problem  may  involve  school  dining  rooms, 
domestic  science  laboratories,  industrial  training  playgrounds,  va- 
cation schools,  payment  for  school  attendance,  and  also  other  social 
reforms  which  fall  outside  the  purely  educational  sphere;  but  these 
are  the  fundamental  educational  requirements. 

With  this  understanding  as  to  the  prime  essentials,  we  may 
now  justly,  conscientiously  and  rationally  ask:  What  is  the  proper 
standard  for  the  determination  of  values  in  pedagogical  science? 
How  may  the  educational  value  of  a  given  subject  or  method  be 
determined?  Methods  and  values  change,  of  course,  with  the  age 
and  development  of  the  child.  Physiology  and  psychology  must 
aid  in  the  determination  of  appropriate  methods.  But  outside  and 
beyond  the  mere  technical  details  in  regard  to  furnishing  materials 
in  the  proper  form  and  at  the  appropriate  time  for  the  average  in- 
dividual lies  the  broader,  but  often  neglected,  task  of  shaping  our 
educational  ideals  and  values  to  fit  conditions  in  the  industrial  and 
social  world.  As  generation  succeeds  generation,  as  century  treads 
upon  the  heels  of  century,  social,  political  and  industrial  relations 
are  transformed.  The  meaning  and  the  scope  of  such  terms  as 
morality,  law,  justice,  liberty,  patriotism  and  nation  change  with  the 
world's  progress.     In  like  manner  are  the  meaning  and  the  scope 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  3 

of  education  changed.  There  is  no  fixed  and  cosmopolitan  defini- 
tion for  any  one  of  these  familiar  terms.  Industrial  organization 
quietly  forces  its  peculiar  impress  upon  each  and  all. 

In  democratic  America,  in  a  land  of  poverty,  wealth  and  mixed 
nationalities,  in  an  era  of  trusts,  dynamos  and  labor  unions,  in  an 
epoch  which  will  be  marked  in  history  as  transitional  in  regard  to 
social  and  economic  relations,  in  a  period  when  education  means 
preparation  for  life's  activities,  what  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
student  of  social  science  are  some  of  the  important  educational 
ideals — ideals  which  are  essential  when  measured  by  the  social 
standard  or  criterion  of  educational  values? 

(1)  Education  should  be  primarily  vocational,  rather  than  cul- 
tural. The  school  should  prepare  for  activity  rather  than  for 
leisure.  Education  ought  to  be  a  systematically  organized  process 
for  putting  the  right  man  in  the  right  place,  for  bringing  to  the 
surface  and  developing  the  latent  possibilities  of  each  and  every 
child,  rich  or  poor,  black  or  white.  Each  child  is  a  peculiar  and 
unique  bit  of  plastic  human  material,  and  ought  finally  to  fit  in 
some  particular  part  of  the  world's  mechanism.  Many  investigators 
are  telling  the  American  people  of  the  enormous  losses  due  to  tuber- 
culosis, typhoid  fever  and  other  diseases,  and  of  the  fearful  wastes 
due  to  accidents,  intemperance  and  other  preventable  ills.  More 
attention  should  be  given  to  the  great  waste  in  efficiency,  pro- 
ductiveness and  happiness  due  to  the  stunting  of  the  individuality, 
the  loss  of  spontaneity  and  the  diminution  of  the  efficiency  of  the 
student  in  the  average  crowded  class-room  of  today.  It  should  be 
one  of  the  most  important  duties  of  the  school  to  ascertain  the 
capabilities  of  each  child  and  to  point  out,  in  a  general  way,  to  each 
child  the  kind  of  work  for  which  he  or  she  is  adapted.  The  loss 
to  the  world  twenty-five  years  hence  because  we  are  aiming  to  make 
third-rate  lawyers  of  persons  who  might  be  first-class  mechanics, 
and  clerks  of  those  who  might  be  high-grade  chemists,  is  very 
great.  Educational  misfits  and  inefficient  educational  mechanism 
are  costly.  We  are  sorely  in  need  of  a  statistician  who  will  place 
the  matter  before  us  in  dollars  and  cents.  Let  it  be  clearly  under- 
stood, however,  that  no  plea  is  here  made  for  any  artificial  system 
which  will  lead  to  deepening  or  continuing  class  demarcations.  The 
products  of  the  school  ought  to  be  standardized  or  rigidly  divided 
into  classes  and  grades ;  each  child  ought  to  bear  the  mark  of  indi- 
viduality. This  means  smaller  classes,  better  teachers,  less  red- 
tape,  more  money  and  more  efficient  graduates.  In  short,  the 
school  should  be  a  studio,  not  a  factory ;  but  at  the  present  moment 
the  factory  method  seems  to  be  gaining  ground.  Unless  the  re- 
formers and  the  masses  call  a  halt,  our  schools  will  be  commer- 
cialized. The  city  schools  of  this  republic  are  gradually  and  insidi- 
ously becoming  standardized,  large-scale  brain-cramming  and  indi- 


4  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

viduality-stuiiting  factories.  The  demand  for  a  "business  adminis- 
tration" must  be  resisted  in  the  name  of  educational  science  and  of 
racial  efficiency.  Educational  reformers  must  turn  economists. 
Revenues  can  be  adequately  increased  by  diverting  monopoly  gains 
from  the  pockets  of  private  individuals  into  the  public  treasury. 

A  recent  criticism  of  the  German  systems  of  education  is  ap- 
plicable in  presenting  this  weakness  in  our  educational  system — a 
defect  which  an  important  and  powerful  element  in  our  population 
is  attempting  to  clothe  with  honor  and  dignity.  The  German  sys- 
tems of  education  "are  incomparable  so  far  as  their  purpose  is  the 
production  of  scholars  and  teachers,  or  of  officials  and  functionaries 
to  move  the  cranks,  turn  the  screws,  gear  the  pulleys  and  oil  the 
wheels  of  the  complicated  national  machinery";  but  they  "are  far 
from  being  equally  successful  in  making  of  character  and  indi- 
viduality." This  is  a  system  the  spirit  of  which  calls  for  the  com- 
mercialization of  the  public  schools.  This  is  the  sort  of  school 
system  whose  north  star  is  business  and  profits,  not  individual  de- 
velopment and  human  brotherhood.  The  potent  push  toward  such 
a  lop-sided  system  comes  from  business  demands  and  class  inter- 
ests, and  is  partially,  at  least,  antagonistic  to  the  broader  ideal  of 
social  welfare  and  racial  progress.  We  who  do  not  manage  ma- 
chinery, direct  commercial  enterprises  or  manipulate  the  stock  mar- 
kets, we  whose  eyes  are  not  constantly  focused  upon  the  industrial 
prowess  and  trade  acuteness  of  the  American  directors  of  big  busi- 
nesses, can  more  or  less  definitely  see  the  deadening  effect  of  fac- 
tory methods  in  the  school  house;  and  we  can  see  that  in  order  to 
be  in  accord  with  democratic  ideals  the  fascinating  economic  lure 
which  has  hypnotized  the  employers  of  labor  must  be  subordinated 
to  the  demands  of  social  good  and  racial  efficiency.  It  is  high  time 
that~bur  educators,  our  students  of  social  problems,  our  working- 
men,  our  farmers  and  our  professional  classes  stand  forth  boldly 
and  contest  the  right  of  big  business  to  direct  the  educational  and 
political  affairs  of  the  nation.  The  fanaticism  and  the  short-sighted- 
ness of  industrialism  is  daily  becoming  more  dangerous  and  deadly 
to  the  race  and  nation. 

(2)  The  ideal  school  of  the  present  and  of  the  immediate  fu- 
ture is  not  that  of  a  tiresome  place  where  students  congregate  more 
or  less  willingly  to  listen,  to  study  and  to  be  repressed.  The  school 
should  be  a  hive  of  activity.  It  should  be  a  place  where  practical 
and  personal  experience  is  broadened  and  made  intelligible.  The 
school  must  become  a  workshop,  a  studio  and  a  center  of  refining 
and  ennobling  influences.  The  ideal  school,  primary,  secondary 
or  collegiate,  is  one  to  which  students  come,  not  one  to  which  they 
are  sent.  In  the  school  of  the  future,  more  will  be  made  of  the 
first-hand  experiences  of  the  students.  Mere  book  study  and  mem- 
ory drill  will  be  given  a  subordinate  place.     Each  individual  has  his 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  5 

own  problems,  his  own  interests,  his  own  likes  and  dislikes.  To 
work  along  the  oft-mentioned  line  of  least  resistance  we  must  utilize 
these  individual  experiences  and  peculiarities.  This  necessitates 
reliance  in  no  small  measure  upon  the  laboratory  method,  and  a 
close  connection  between  theory  and  practice,  between  class-room 
and  the  busy  outside  world.  Again,  educational  science  is  begin- 
ning to  evaluate,  as  it  should,  according  to  the  social  standard,  pre- 
cept above  preaching,  character  above  outward  conventional  con- 
formity, good  environment  and  good  example  above  strict  rules  of 
conduct,  the  warm  heart  above  the  iron  hand. 

(3)  Human  relations  in  the  present  age  are  characterized  by 
increasing  interdependence  and  co-operation.  The  members  of  this 
great  nation,  yea,  of  the  globe,  are  knit  together  and  inter-related, 
industrially,  politically  and  socially  as  never  before.  World  mar- 
kets, division  of  labor,  aggregated  industry  and  consolidated  rail- 
ways, are  making  social  and  industrial  democracy  an  inevitable  out- 
come. The  study  of  industrial  and  social  progress  shows  clearly 
that  the  educational  system  ought  to  exert  its  influence  to  break 
down  class  demarcations.  If  it  lives  up  to  its  social  mission,  the 
school  must  stand  firm  for  equality  of  opportunity;  and  it  must 
teach  respect  for  manual  labor.  Under  present  conditions  to  ef- 
fectively present  the  ideal  of  the  dignity  of  labor  and  of  service  is 
very  difficult;  but  it  will  become  increasingly  easy.  Today  few 
can  attain  positions  of  great  wealth.  Wealth  getting  through  the 
exploitation  of  natural  resources  and  the  subdual  of  natural  forces 
is  withheld  from  the  great  majority  of  the  eager  and  ambitious 
youth  of  the  land.  As  a  consequence,  the  social  ideal  of  service  to 
humanity  is  beginning  to  replace  the  familiar  individualistic  ideal 
of  personal  attainment  of  wealth.  For  example,  a  college  president, 
addressing  the  graduating  class  of  1909,  proudly  pointed  to  the  fact 
that  few,  if  any,  graduates  of  that  institution  were  men  or  women 
receiving  large  incomes.  The  youth  lives  upon  ideals.  Block  the 
way  to  a  sordid  and  individualistic  goal,  and  behold,  he  turns  eager- 
ly and  passionately  toward  a  social  goal — the  uplift  of  struggling 
humanity. 

If  the  educational  system  of  our  country  is  to  be  a  potent  factor 
in  bringing  about  social  betterment  through  peaceful,  rather  than 
violent,  means,  it  must  emphasize  those  ideals  which  lead  to  useful 
industry  rather  than  idle  parasitism,  which  point  to  service  to  hu- 
manity rather  than  wealth  accumulation.  The  school  must  unre- 
servedly teach  that  the  idlers  and  the  useless  workers  are  parasites, 
and  that  the  idle  rich  are  at  least  as  dangerous  as  are  the  idle  poor. 
If  education  is  approaching  a  scientific  basis,  it  ought  to  be  able 
to  discover  and  to  measure  the  social  inertia  which  carries  aristo- 
cratic medievalism  down  into  an  age  of  nominal  democratic  indus- 
trialism. 


6  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

(4)  The  school  should  reach  workers  as  well  as  non-workers. 
Education  and  industry  once  went  hand  in  hand;  through  the 
introduction  of  manual  training  we  are  attempting  to  again  unite 
them.  But  the  vital  need  of  the  present  is  education  for  those 
who  are  forced  to  enter  our  shops,  stores  and  offices  without  coming 
into  contact  with  the  training  which  our  schools  ought  to  give  in 
science,  history  (not  chronology)  and  literature.  The  ideal  school 
of  the  future  will  not  close  its  doors  in  the  face  of  the  worker  as 
the  whirling  wheels  of  the  factory  stop,  the  click  of  the  typewriter 
ceases,  and  the  constant  hum  of  the  cash  carrier  dies  away.  No 
educational  system  which  does  not  aim  to  reach  young  workers  as 
well  as  those  who  are  not  obliged  to  early  earn  their  daily  bread 
is  worthy  of  high  rank  in  the  present  era.  The  public  schools  have 
not  adequately  provided  for  the  educational  needs  of  the  young 
workers ;  this  work  has  been  largely  left  to  the  private  correspond- 
ence schools  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  night  schools.  In  preceding 
centuries  the  burden  bearers  of  the  race  were  considered  to  be  un- 
worthy of  an  education.  Because  of  social  inertia  and  class  de- 
marcations, our  ideas  in  regard  to  the  proper  scope  of  a  public 
school  system  are  still  influenced  and  colored  by  the  old  prejudices 
against  the  wage  earner.  The  high  school,  the  continuation  school, 
the  college  and  the  university  ought  to  stand  ready  to  help  any  one 
in  the  community  in  any  important  line  of  study  or  of  investigation. 
The  school  system  should  be  for  "any  one,  anywhere,  any  time." 

(5)  The  true  function  of  education  is  to  be  a  social  directive 
agent,  and  to  reduce  social  maladjustments;  or,  in  other  words,  to 
be  the  trusted  servant  of  sociology.  The  final  and  only  stable 
standard  of  educational  values  is  sociological.  Heretofore,  educa- 
tional advance  has  lagged  behind  social  progress.  Science  is  gath- 
ering data  for  directive,  purposive  social  action;  and  it  is  the  func- 
tion of  sociology,  the  science  of  human  society,  to  reduce  the  fric- 
tion which  retards  and  ofttimes  temporarily  diverts  the  onward 
march  of  human  progress.  Since  sociology  is  still  distant  from  a 
true  scientific  basis,  education  must  also  remain  in  a  measure  un- 
scientific. Only  general  rules  can  be  laid  down ;  and  men  having 
different  ideals  and  class  interests  must  necessarily  differ  in  regard 
to  them.  No  one  is  justified,  however,  in  condemning  or  approv- 
ing an  educational  process  or  method  because  it  is  old  or  because  it 
is  new.  Each  and  every  educational  method  and  ideal,  old  or  new, 
must  be  constantly  subjected  to  careful  and  unbiased  scrutiny  from 
two  dissimilar  standpoints — that  of  psychology  and  that  of  so- 
ciology. The  educator,  let  it  be  repeated,  who  overlooks  one  or 
both  of  these  criterions  stands  condemned  in  the  light  of  modern 
scientific  and  historical  knowledge.  He  has  not  grasped  the  funda- 
mentals of  pedagogical  science.  His  place  is  in  the  machine  shop 
or  the  counting  room,  not  in  the  school. 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 


Planetesimal  Theory  of  the  Earth's 

Origin 


By  May  Wood-Simons,  Ph.  B. 


[EDITORIAL  NOTE— This  is  the  first  of  a  series  of  six  pa- 
pers dealing  with  the  newest  discoveries  and  theories  in  the  domains 
of  science  and  philosophy.  Chemistry  will  be  the  subject  next 
month,  while  Biology,  Psychology  and  Economics  will  folloiv.  The 
last  paper  will  be  on  "The  Philosophy  of  Education/'] 

An  eminent  scientist  once  made  the  statement  that  all  living, 
vital  knowledge  is  in  the  minds  of  men  and  that  by  the  time  it  is 
printed  in  books  it  has  already  become  antiquated.     This  remark 

,      is  at  least  illustrative  of  the  rapid  advance 

that   science    is   making-   through   new    dis- 
coveries. 

The  planetesimal  theory  of  the  origin 
of  the  solar  system  has  but  recently  been 
set  forth  in  book  form  and  though  no  doubt 
it  will  be  greatly  modified  as  later  investi- 
gations are  made,  it  is  at  present  a  working 
JB  basis  for  the  majority  of  scientists. 
1I&         Jt  There  are  but  four  groups     of     men 
whose   opinions   on  this   subject  carry  any 
weight.      These    are    the    astronomers,    the 
physicists.     The    astronomers    are    impor- 
tant because   they   have   investigated   solar   systems   with   the   best 
astronomical  apparatus  so  far  devised;  the  geologists  because  their 
studies  of  the  earth  have  thrown  light  on  its  origin  and  its  process 
of  growth;  the  mathematicians  because  the  question  to  be  discussed 
involves  complex  mathematical  computations ;  the  physicists  because 
of  their  knowledge  of  matter  and  the  laws  of  energy. 

Until  recently  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  solar  system  as 
formulated  by  Laplace  and  known  as  the  Nebular  Hypothesis  has 
been  accepted  by  scientists.  To  make  the  planetesimal  theory  clear 
it  seems  advisable  to  briefly  state  the  main  points  of  the  older 
theory  and  the  objections  that  have  been  urged  against  it. 

The  nebular  hypothesis  presupposed  a  gaseous  globe  in  the 
heavens,  the  substances  of  which,  as  the  gases  gradually  cooled, 
came  together  in  crusted  masses,  forming  what  are  now  the  planets, 
while  the  central  residue  remained  and  constituted  what  is  now  the 
sun.  This  gaseous  globe  extended,  of  course,  beyond  the  present 
orbit  of  Neptune,  which  is  the  farthest  planet  from  the  sun.     As  to 


8  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

the  origin  of  this  gaseous  globe,  it  was  believed  to  have  arisen 
through  the  collision  of  two  large  bodies.  The  globe,  it  was  held, 
was  in  a  condition  of  extreme  heat  and  the  gases  were  greatly  rari- 
fied,  owing  to  the  intense  heat.  The  planets  were  supposed  to  have 
been  formed  in  this  manner: 

The  gaseous  globe  was  rotating  in  the  same  direction  as  the 
present  solar  system,  and  as  it  rotated  it  lost  its  heat  by  radiation 
and  consequently  contracted,  which  increased  the  speed  of  rotation. 
Now  two  forces,  the  centripetal  and  the  centrifugal,  were  holding 
the  gaseous  substance  in  place.  But  with  the  cooling  and  shrinking 
of  the  gaseous  globe,  attended  by  greater  speed  of  rotation,  there 
came  a  point  when  the  increased  centrifugal  force  at  the  equator 
equaled  the  centripetal  force.  When  this  point  was  reached  the 
outer  gaseous  matter  at  the  equator  would  cease  to  contract  and 
the  remainder  of  the  globe,  continuing  to  cool  and  contract,  would 
draw  away  from  it,  leaving  a  ring.  This  ring  in  turn  would  cool 
and  contract,  then  break  at  the  weakest  point,  and  the  entire  sub- 
stance finally  draw  together  in  a  mass  which  would  grow  denser 
and  denser  until  it  would  become  solid.  In  this  manner,  it  was 
argued,  all  the  planets  were  made,  Neptune,  the  farthest,  first,  and 
all  the  rest  in  their  turn. 

The  planets,  in  their  turn,  while  cooling  and  contracting,  it  was 
held,  threw  of!  other  rings  that  collected  themselves  each  into  a 
smaller  spheroid  known  as  a  satellite  or  moon. 

This  theory,  thus  briefly  stated,  presents  various  difficulties. 
First,  it  is  not  believed  that  the  equatorial  matter  would  have  sep- 
arated in  definite  rings  from  the  larger  gaseous  globe,  but  rather 
would  have  been  left  behind  in  disk  shapes.  Neither  is  it  believed 
that  rings  of  gas  would  have  collected  into  spheroids  so  easily  as 
the  theory  supposed. 

While  there  are  several  other  objections,  there  is  one  that  is 
most  serious.  There  is  a  law  in  physics  that  the  momentum  of  a 
rotating  system  remains  the  same,  no  matter  what  internal  changes 
take  place  in  it,  provided  nothing  affects  it  from  without. 

Professor  Moulton,  astronomer  at  the  University  of  Chicago, 
has  shown  that  if  the  solar  system  were  to  be  converted  into  a  gase- 
ous spheroid  so  expanded  as  to  fill  Neptune's  orbit  and  distributed 
in  density  so  as  to  conform  to  the  laws  of  gases  (and  if  the  mo- 
mentum now  possessed  by  the  solar  system  be  given  to  it),  it  would 
not  have  a  rate  of  rotation  sufficient  to  detach  matter  from  its  equa- 
tor, and  it  would  not  acquire  such  a  rate  until  it  had  contracted 
well  within  the  orbit  of  the  innermost  planet. 

The  planetesimal  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  solar  system  was 
developed  by  Professor  Thomas  C.  Chamberlain,  head  of  the  de- 
partment of  geology  at  the  University  of  Chicago.    He  was  greatly 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  9 

assisted  in  his  investigations  by  Dr.  F.  R.  Moulton,  head  of  the  de 
partment  of  astronomy  at  the  same  institution. 

The  development  of  the  theory  has  been  much  aided  by  the  per- 
fection of  photography  that  enabled  the  investigators  to  secure  more 
accurate  data  as  to  the  real  form  of  nebulae.  The  examination  of 
many  hundreds  of  photographs  of  nebulae  show  that  they  are  spiral 
in  form  and  characterized  by  the  presence  of  two  arms,  as  is  shown 
in  the  accompanying  photograph.  These  arms  arise  from  opposite 
sides  of  the  nucleus  and  curve  concentrically  away.     Further  ex- 


Photograph  of  Nebula,  Showing  Its  Two  Arms 

animation  discloses  numerous  nebulous  knots  or-  partial  concentra- 
tions on  these  arms. 

We  will  now  consider  the  origin  of  these  nebulae  according  to 
the  planetesimal  theory.  There  are  probably  at  least  100,000,000 
suns  in  our  galaxy  of  suns.  Besides  these  suns  there  are  numerous 
dark  bodies — bodies  without  heat  and  light.  All  of  these  are  mov- 
ing in  various  directions  with  various  velocities.  Under  these  con- 
ditions there  is  strong  probability  that  these  bodies  will  at  times  col- 
lide and  still  greater  probability  that  there  will  be  many  times  when 
bodies  will  closely  approach  each  other.  These  approaches  will  not 
only  be  between  suns,  but  between  suns,  which  are  fluid,  and  dark 
bodies,  which  are  solid. 

Now  as  to  the  effect  of  such  approaches  of  two  bodies,  one  of 
which  is  a  sun.     The  substance  of  a  sun  is  in  a  condition  of  enor- 


10  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

mous  elasticity.  Our  present  sun  shoots  out  protuberances  to  the 
height  of  many  thousands  of  miles.  These  protuberances  move  at 
velocities  reaching  up  to  300  miles  and  more  a  second. 

Suppose  now  that,  with  its  forces  thus  evenly  balanced,  the  sun 
is  approached  by  a  body  larger  than  itself,  perhaps  many  times  as 
great  in  mass.  When  this  happens  the  gravity  that  has  restrained 
the  elastic  power  of  the  sun's  substance  will  be  reduced  along  the 
line  of  mutual  attraction. 

Just  as  in  the  case  of  the  tides,  there  will  be  protuberances  on 
both  sides  of  the  sun.  These  protuberances  on  opposite  sides  fur- 
nish the  explanation  for  the  presence  of  two  opposite  arms  in  the 
spiral  nebulae.  If  the  approaching  body  is  very  great  in  mass,  the 
sun  may  be  disrupted. 

The  knots  of  solar  nebula  are  supposed  to  be  the  nuclei  about 
which  gather  the  planetesimals  to  form  the  future  planets. 

The  planets  then  were  not  originally  hot  gaseous  rings  that, 
contracting,  formed  intensely  heated  gaseous  spheroids,  as  the  neb- 
ular hypothesis  presupposed,  but  are  due  to  the  aggregation,  about 
the  knots  of  the  nebula  as  nuclei,  of  finely  divided  solid  or  liquid 
matter.  That  the  matter  was  solid  or  liquid,  and  probably  mostly 
solid,  is  borne  out  by  the  continuous  spectra  of  spiral  nebulae.  It  is 
also  conceivable  that  the  innumerable  solid  or  liquid  particles  which 
the  continuous  spectrum  implies  revolved  about  the  common  center 
of  gravity  as  though  they  were  planetoidal  bodies. 

The  gathering-in  of  the  planetesimals  in  the  forming  of  the 
planets  was  due  to  the  crossing  of  their  elliptical  orbits  in  the  course 
of  their  inevitable  s-hiftings. 

The  earth  was  not  once,  as  the  majority  of  geologists  believed 
during  the  past  century,  a  molten  ball  that  gradually  through  cooling 
formed  a  crust  covering  the  entire  surface,  but  even  after  the  form- 
ing of  the  crust  having  a  temperature  of  over  2,500  degrees  F. 
All  the  water  of  the  globe,  so  runs  the  older  theory,  was  still  con- 
tained in  the  hot  gases  that  enveloped  the  molten  ball. 

According  to  the  planetesimal  theory,  the  earth  has  grown 
from  probably  a  much  smaller  mass  by  the  aggregation  of  smaller 
bodies  that  gathered  into  it.  These  smaller  bodies  may  have  been 
cold.  It  is  probable  that  the  earth,  instead  of  beginning  as  an  in- 
tensely heated  body,  has  instead  had  a  slowly  rising  internal  tem- 
perature, rising  as  the  mass  increased  and  the  consequent  pressure 
at  the  center  grew  greater. 

The  hot  envelope  of  gases  of  the  nebular  hypothesis  gives  way 
to  a  probable  time  when  the  earth  had  no  atmosphere  at  all,  when  it 
was  too  small  to  hold  gases.  That  is  the  present  condition  of  the 
moon,  which  has  no  atmosphere  because  it  is  not  large  enough  to 
hold  gases.  Such  was  once  the  condition  of  the  earth.  When  it 
was  about  half  its  present  size  it  began  to  hold  an  atmosphere.     It 


The  Progress  ve  Journal  of  Education  1 1 

then  had  sufficient  mass  to  control  the  Hying  molecules  of  atmos- 
pherical material.  Just  what  the  mass  of  a  body  must  be  to  hold 
an  atmosphere  is  not  exactly  known.  It  is  known,  however,  that 
the  moon  has  no  such  atmosphere  and  no  body  smaller  than  the 
moon  holds  gases. 

The  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  atmosphere  according  to  the 
older  hypothesis  is  well  known.  Its  origin  under  the  planetesimal 
theory  presents  many  points  of  difference.  When  the  earth  had 
reached  a  point  in  its  mass  growth  sufficient  to  control  the  molecules 
of  atmospheric  materials  there  were  two  sources  from  which  these 
could  be  supplied. 

First,  there  was  an  external  source.  The  collision  of  the  grow- 
ing earth  with  particles  of  atmospheric  material,  so  soon  as  it  wais 
able  to  hold  them  by  gravity,  was  one  source  of  the  atmosphere. 
Another  was  the  internal  source.  As  the  planetesimals  were  gath- 
ered into  the  earth  they  carried  some  gases  with  them.  Atmospheric 
material  was  thus  built  into  the  earth  itself.  These  gases  were 
given  forth  later  and  fed  the  atmosphere. 

While  the  manner  of  the  origin  of  the  spiral  nebula  is  an  inter- 
esting part  of  the  planetesimal  hypothesis,  the  vital  thing  in  the 
theory  is  the  proof  that  the  scattered  nebular  material  revolves 
around  the  central  mass  in  elliptical  orbits. 

It  is  conceived  that  the  nebula  is  due  to  a  combination  of  an 
outward  and  rotatory  motion  which,  while  giving  a  spiral  form  to 
the  whole,  is  believed  to  have  given  to  each  individual  planetesimal 
an  elliptical  orbit  about  the  common  center.  The  proofs  of  this 
involve  mathematical  computations  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  go 
into  here. 

To  men  of  science  the  formulation  of  this  new  theory  of  the 
earth's  origin  is  of  much  importance.  Numerous  pages  of  geology 
must  be  rewritten,  as  many  of  its  conclusions  have  rested  on  some 
hypothesis  of  the  earth's  origin.  The  astronomers,  too,  will  find 
much  new  material  to  handle  now  that  apparatus  has  enabled  them 
to  examine  more  closely  other  solar  systems  even  now  in  the  process 
of  making. 

Fortunately  there  is  among  many  scientists  a  real  spirit  of 
investigation  that  does  not  hesitate  at  change  of  views  when  facts 
make  such  change  necessary,  and  the  planetesimal  theory  has  met 
with  comparatively  little  opposition. 

There  are  probably  not  a  dozen  scientists  today  whose  opinions 
have  weight  who  have  not  accepted  it. 


12  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

Social  Conditions  and  Theories  in 
the  Grseco-  Roman  World 

By  W.  A.  Oldfather, 

Associate  Professor  of  Classics,   University  of  Illinois. 


FIRST  ARTICLE 
The  General  Problem 

[EDITORIAL  NOTE — This  series  of  papers  will  appear  con- 
secutively in  the  Progressive  Journal  throughout  the  second  vol- 
ume.] 

There  appeared  not  long  ago  a  cartoon  in  one  of  our  daily 
papers  in  which,  arrayed  among  the  forces  opposed  to  progress,  the 
head  of  one  of  our  great  eastern  institutions  of  learning  was  cari- 
catured clad  in  academic  garb  and  holding  under  his  arm  a  huge 
tome  inscribed  "Ancient  History."  I  select  this  incident  as  per- 
fectly typical  of  a  widespread,  indeed,  almost  universal  prejudice, 
which  assumes  that  the  study  of  the  past  is  unfavorable  or  at  least 
unrelated  to  a  progressive  frame  of  mind  and  wide  sympathies  with 
the  duties  and  problems  of  the  present  and  the  immediate  future. 
The  prejudice  is  natural,  for  those  who  have  never  studied  closely 
the  civilization  of  any  period  of  past  history  are  more  impressed  by 
its  superficial  and  therefore  striking  dissimilarities,  and  fail  to  ap- 
preciate the  profounder  and  subtler  unities  of  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual life. 

It  is  true,  as  an  editorial  in  a  peculiarly  notorious  morning 
paper  tells  us,  that  Solomon  never  had  a  bath  in  a  porcelain  tub, 
and  went  to  bed  by  the  light  of  a  tallow  dip,  while  the  Queen  of 
Sheba  visited  him  riding  in  the  hot  sun  on  the  back  of  a  camel, 
but  there  were  men  of  that  race  and  age  whose  moral  concepts  are 
woven  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  our  daily  conduct  and  whose  very 
words  are  still  clean-cut  and  crisp  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a 
score  of  centuries. 

If  the  appreciation  of  a  difference  is  essential  to  the  most  ele- 
mentary processes  of  thought,  the  discovery  of  similarity,  that  unity 
in  diversity  which  we  call  a  "law"  marks  the  highest  triumph  of 
imaginative  discernment,  and  if  it  be  in  any  sense  true,  as  is  so  often 
stated,  that  the  man  who  knows  no  language  but  his  own  cannot 
know  even  that  well,  the  same  holds  with  especial  fitness  in  the 
study  of  social  and  political  conditions.  He  who  is  familiar  with 
the  life  of  more  than  one  great  nation  at  more  than  a  single  period 
of  its  development  has  a  background,  a  touchstone,  a  parallel  and 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  13 

an  instance  to  clarify  and  sober  his  judgment  of  each  present  event 
and  tendency,  which  the  man  who  is  all  engrossed  in  the  life  at 
his  elbow  tips  cannot  so  much  as  appreciate.  At  any  given  period 
the  currents  and  counter-currents  are  so  numerous,  the  longest 
possible  period  of  personal  observation  at  best  so  short  and  the  dis- 
crimination between  the  deeper  movements  and  the  mere  transitory 
phenomena  so  difficult,  that  the  man  who  boasts  overmuch  of  his 
up-to-dateness  is  very  likely  to  have  no  real  comprehension  of  the 
very  life  with  which  he  so  loudly  professes  to  be  perfectly  con- 
versant. On  the  other  hand  the  student  of  past  civilizations  which 
have  left  anything  like  adequate  records  has  the  whole  sweep  of 
events  from  first  to  last  for  his  observation,  can  separate  the  funda- 
mental from  the  accidental,  if  not  otherwise,  at  least  by  the  mere 
fact  of  survival,  while,  if  his  range  be  but  wide  enough,  he  can 
find  a  time  and  a  place  where  most  if  not  all  tendencies  observable 
at  this  present  time  had,  severally,  each  its  opportunity  to  develop 
to  its  natural  conclusion  and  so  to  disclose  that  true  nature  which 
is  so  often  likely  to  be  hidden  by  the  medley  of  conflicting  trends 
which  make  up  our  modern  social  life. 

The  student  of  past  civilizations  has  thus  a  vast  and  well- 
stocked  museum  in  which  to  carry  on  his  studies,  while  the  mere 
up-to-date  man  has  only  what  might  be  called  a  laboratory,  were  it 
not  that  he  is  privileged  merely  to  observe  demonstrations,  and  only 
if  he  be  the  rarest  and  most  fortunate  of  men,  occasionally  allowed 
to  take  part  in  an  experiment.  It  is  the  combination  of  Geology 
and  Biology  that  has  given  us  Palaeontology,  the  most  illuminative 
of  all  natural  sciences,  or  to  change  the  figure,  the  telescope  is  quite 
as  essential  to  the  understanding  of  the  Cosmos  as  the  microscope. 

The  field  of  Graeco-Roman  civilization,  to  which  I  shall  devote 
my  attention,  has  for  us  a  typical  value.  In  that  world  are  the 
fountain  springs  of  our  own  culture,  and  vastly  more  than  most  men 
realize  comes  from  it  to  us  directly  by  borrowing  and  assimilation, 
or  indirectly  by  stimulation  and  suggestion.  It  will  be  long,  if  ever, 
before  we  shall  cease  to  draw  new  lessons  and  inspiration  from 
some  different  aspect  of  its  many-sided  life.  Nor  is  the  field  so 
narrow  as  many  would  suppose.  It  stretches  over  a  millennium 
and  a  half  and  embraces  the  sharpest  contrasts  as  well  as  the  most 
varied  developments.  From  Homer  to  Lucian  is  as  great  a  step  as 
from  Chaucer  to  Bernard  Shaw,  and  the  contrast  between  the  so- 
cial and  political  outlook  of  an  Agamemnon,  a  Solon,  a  Pericles,  an 
Alexander,  a  Tarquin,  a  Scipio,  an  Augustus  and  a  Diocletian 
would  be  vivid  in  the  extreme. 

It  were  superfluous  to  speak  of  what  literature,  the  arts,  science 
and  philosophy  owe  this  civilization,  but  even  that  one  science — if  it 
really  yet  deserves  the  name — which  alone  the  Greeks  cannot  prop- 
erly claim  to  have  founded  or  greatly  to  have  advanced,  Political 


14  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

Economy,  has  learned  much  and  may  learn  yet  more  from  the  same 
source.  Rodbertus  insisted  that  "we  should  refill  our  political  life 
with  more  of  the  spirit  of  antiquity" ;  Lorenz  von  Stein  was  never 
wearied  of  drawing  parallels  with  the  ancient  world,  declaring  that 
"we  re-live  the  past  for  ourselves  in  our  study  of  what  the  ancients 
were  and  did";  Roscher  as  early  as  1849  protested  against  the  ex- 
treme individualism  of  the  laissez-faire  doctrine  and  called  vigor- 
ously to  mind  the  Political  Economy  of  the  Hellenes,  "who,  in  the 
study  of  wealth,  never  made  the  error  of  forgetting  mankind,"  and 
he  recalled  "with  respect  and  gratitude"  what  Thucydides  had 
taught  him  of  Economics. 

In  the  general  and  wide-sweeping  change  which  has  come  over 
the  study  of  Political  Economy,  in  which  the  unhindered  operation 
of  purely  selfish  and  utilitarian  principles  of  conduct  has  been  con- 
demned and  the  demand  made  for  a  combination  with  moral  and 
ethical  considerations,  a  tendency  which  Sismondi,  Roscher,  Knies, 
Wagner,  Sombart  and  Schmoller  among  many  others  have  especially 
emphasized,  accompanying  their  arguments  by  direct  citations  of  the 
Greek  economists  and  philosophers,  the  spirit  of  the  best  social 
thought  of  classical  times  has  largely  come  to  its  own.  Poehlmann 
rightly  has  traced  in  this ,  movement  the  closest  relations  to  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  and  Knies  has  himself  shown  that  this  tendency  man- 
ifested itself  just  among  those  economists  trained  in  the  predom- 
inantly humanistic  schools  of  western  Europe.  Was  it  not  Aristotle 
himself  who  protested  vigorously  against  the  panta  eateon 
(lit.  laissez-faire)  doctrine  of  the  advanced  individualism  of  his 
age?  (Cf.  Poehlmann,  "Geschichte  des  Antiken  Kommunismus  und 
Sozialismus,"  I.  183;  and  "Aus  Altertum  und  Gegenwart,"  p.  120  f.) 
You  can  of  course  contrast  with  this  the  notorious  dictum  of  Cob- 
den  who  declared  that  there  was  more  to  learn  in  a  single  number 
of  the  "Times"  than  in  all  the  books  of  Thucydides.  But  to  put  this 
remark  in  its  proper  setting  must  be  added  Cobden's  other  firm 
belief  that  all  governments  were  permanent  conspiracies  whose  ob- 
ject was  to  cajole  and  plunder  the  common  people.  To  a  man 
with  so  low  and  primitive  a  conception  of  the  state  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  Thucydides  contained  nothing  of  interest.  This  stage 
of  political  development  the  Greeks  had  outlived,  or  perhaps  better, 
had  never  experienced  at  all. 

How  infinitely  superior  is  the  conception  of  the  Hellenes,  that 
in  the  state  alone,  extending  its  reach  over  all  phases  of  life,  the 
individual  develops  to  his  highest  capacities.  It  was  this  very  ideal 
which  the  great  master  of  classical  philology  of  the  last  century, 
August  Boeckh,  after  years  of  profoundest  study  of  Greek  political 
and  economic  conditions,  extracted  as  the  most  precious  social  les- 
son of  antiquity,  whose  adoption  he  urged  upon  the  Germany  of  his 
day — as  he  expressed  it,  "that  we  should  widen  our  notion  of  the 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  15 

state  so  as  to  feel  that  the  state  is  that  institution  within  which  the 
whole  virtue  of  humanity  should  be  realized,"  words  which  express 
the  highest  socialistic  ideals  so  perfectly  that  Ferdinand  Lassalle 
took  them  over  without  change  as  embodying  in  classic  form  the 
essence  of  the  socialistic  doctrine  of  the  state. 

When  we  now  turn  to  consider  what  relations  social  conditions 
bear  to  political,  how  the  different  classes  of  society  are  related  to 
one  another  and  to  the  state,  we  are  but  treating  the  same  problem 
which  the  ancient  political  and  social  science  raised.  Long  ago 
Aristotle,  following  Plato,  sought  and  found  the  cause  for  changes 
of  constitutions  and  the  new  aspects  which  political  parties  assume 
in  the  economic  and  social  conditions  of  the  different  classes  of  socie- 
ty. Aristotle  taught  that  "the  constitution  is  (i.  e.,  is  made  or  inter- 
preted by)  the  ruling  class  in  society,"  and  that  states  differ  essen- 
tially only  in  so  far  as  a  capitalistic  minority,  the  great  mass  of 
small  property  holders,  or  the  proletariat,  happen  to  form  the  ruling 
class,  and  whether  each  class  is  able  when  in  power  to  carry 
through  its  whole  program  or  is  hampered  by  the  vigorous  opposi- 
tion of  the  other  classes.  So  profoundly  had  Aristotle  appreciated 
the  importance  of  the  economic  element  in  the  study  of  administra- 
tion that  no  less  an  authority  than  Lorenz  von  Stein  asserted  that 
his  "Politics"  will  be  for  the  Political  Science  of  the  future  what 
Copernicus'  "Organon"  has  been  for  astronomy,  and  again,  "Aris- 
totle, following  Plato,  was  the  first  to  recognize  property  and  its 
power  as  the  irresistible  factor  in  the  formation  of  all  positive  po- 
litical constitutions;  the  man  that  does  not  know  Aristotle  is  igno- 
rant of  the  meaning  of  property.  It  is  time  we  recognize  in  him  what 
he  can  rightfully  claim  as  his  true  historical  possession,"  and  this 
is  nothing  less  than  the  discovery  of  the  so-called  Materialistic  In- 
terpretation of  History  in  that  province  where  its  claims  are,  if  any- 
where, safe  against  criticism — i.  e.,  the  development  of  forms  of 
government. 

That  which  Aristotle  saw  so  clearly  was  not  recognized  in 
modern  times  until  after  the  French  Revolution,  when  the  world 
was  surprised  to  see  that  the  victors  of  the  revolt — the  Third  Estate 
— did  not  represent  the  whole  people,  but  that  a  fourth,  the  prop- 
ertyless  class,  came  forward  with  a  program  and  demands  which  in 
many  particulars  were  fundamentally  opposed  to  the  interests  of 
the  Tiers  Etat.  It  was  this  experience  which  gave  the  death  blow 
to  the  theory  that  the  state  and  the  nation  is  but  a  mass  of  indi- 
viduals, each  with  the  same  or  at  least  similar  interests,  instincts  and 
opportunities,  and  neglected  the  notorious  fact  of  the  stratification 
of  society  into  economic  classes  zvhose  interests  are  inevitably  and 
under  the  present  system  must  remain  more  or  less  antagonistic  to 
each  other,  in  whatever  way  that  antagonism  may  express  itself, 
whether  it  be  by  protest,  persuasion  or  action,  and  that  peaceable  or 


16  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

revolutionary.  Is  it  not  strange  that  even  to  this  day,  when  the 
waves  of  social,  unrest  are  sweeping  over  the  whole  world,  when 
even  India  and  Japan,  Turkey  and  Persia  are  following  in  the  steps 
of  Europe  and  America,  there  should  yet  remain,  especially  in  edu- 
cated and  wealthy  circles,  the  old  individualistic,  atomistic  con- 
ception of  society,  and  that,  too,  though  Aristotle's  "Politics"  has 
not  been  a  sealed  book,  and  the  whole  history  of  the  last  century 
and  a  quarter  has  but  confirmed  his  views? 

If,  then,  Aristotle  set  down  principles  of  social  development 
which  hold  for  the  present,  it  needs  must  be  that  the  society  with 
which  he  was  familiar  had  passed  or  was  passing  through  these 
stages,  and  must  therefore  show  phenomena  highly  analogous  to 
those  of  our  day.  The  basis  of  the  ancient  free  state  was  the 
autonomy  of  its  society — i.  e.,  the  sovereignty  of  that  class  of  so- 
ciety which  for  the  time  being  had  control  of  the  machinery  of 
government.  The  elements  of  the  organization  of  society — property 
and  its  distribution,  the  social  forms  and  organizations — had  such 
fundamental  importance  in  all  these  relations  that  the  development 
of  the  ancient  state  depended  almost  wholly  on  what  class,  capitalist, 
bourgeoisie  or  proletariat,*  had  the  deciding  influence  in  public  life. 

The  fatal  results  of  this  system  are  known  in  their  harrowing 
details.  After  a  longer  or  shorter  period  of  bloom,  following  the 
political  revolutions  of  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries,  during  which 
the  contrasts  in  wealth  and  prestige  of  the  earlier  period  were  di- 
minished and  the  poorer  people  enjoyed  a  tolerable,  often  an  enjoy- 
able existence,  there  developed  anew  sharply  defined  economic 
classes  which  inevitably  brought  the  democratic  state  into  the  throes 
of  social  revolution.  The  egoistic  trend  of  commercial  competition 
turned  to  the  seizing  of  the  organized  power  of  the  state  as  a  lever- 
age for  forcing  through  those  measures  which  benefited  its  own  in- 
terests, and  every  social  antagonism  was  at  once  reflected  in  political 
life.  The  state  became  the  arena  of  the  savagest  strife,  where  social 
classes  fought  one  another  with  a  ferocity  rarely  shown  even  to 
national  foes,  and  the  most  frank  and  shameless  professions  of 
greed  and  self-interest  became  the  rallying  cry  of  political  parties. 
Political  differences  changed  everywhere  into  economic,  open  war 
was  proclaimed  between  rich  and  poor,  proletariat  and  property 
holder,  till  at  length  the  tyranny  of  Macedon  was  introduced  in  an 
effort  to  preserve  the  social  order  even  at  the  cost  of  national  inde- 
pendence. 

The  terms  of  the  treaty,  sworn  to  after  Chaironeia  in  338,  are 
of  profoundest  significance,  for  by  them  the  government  of  each 


♦EDITORIAL  NOTE — These  words  are  used  in  their  strictly  arbitrary 
sense,  meaning,  respectively,  the  large  property  holding  class,  the  small 
property  holding  class,  and  the  non-property  holding  class.  In  modern  so- 
ciety capitalist  and  bourgeois  mean  the  same.  Of  course,  capitalism,  as  the 
term  is  now  used,  could  only  he  possible  since  the  coming  of  the  capitalistic, 
or   modern  industrial,   era  of  machine   manufacture. 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  17 

Hellenic  state  was  forbidden  "to  put  to  death  or  banish  the  mem- 
bers of  the  opposing  party  without  due  process  of  law,  to  confis- 
cate property,  redivide  landed  estates,  or  cancel  debts."  For  the 
next  two  centuries  the  call  for  the  forcible  redistribution  of  prop- 
erty was  the  battle  cry  of  the  disinherited  masses,  until  Rome  vio- 
lently crushed  the  disturbances  and  with  them  the  vital,  fructifying 
life  of  Hellas  for  all  time. 

On  a  vastly  larger  scale  the  same  was  enacted  at  Rome,  where 
an  imperialistic  plutocracy  through  criminal  mismanagement  and 
neglect  prepared  the  way  for  the  desperate  revolutions  of  the  last 
century  of  the  Republic,  whose  inevitable  outcome  could  be  Cae- 
sarism  alone.  There  still  rings  from  the  first  great  epoch  of  this 
social  revolution  at  Rome  the  cry  of  Tiberius  Gracchus  to  the  dis- 
inherited Roman  proletariat  in  words  which  without  a  single  change 
might  be  heard  today  in  any  social  revolutionary  gathering:  "Even 
the  beasts  of  the  field  have  their  lairs,  but  the  citizens  who  have 
fought  for  the  honor  and  the  glory  of  the  state  have  no  place  to 
lay  their  heads.  Naught  is  left  them  save  light  and  air.  Is  it  not  a 
burning  insult  when  generals  before  battle  dare  to  remind  these 
men  that  they  are  fighting  for  their  hearth  and  home,  the  altars  and 
graves  of  their  fathers?  Where  is  their  hearth  and  home,  where 
the  altars  and  graves  of  their  fathers?  It  is  not  for  their  own 
homes,  but  for  the  lust  and  greed  of  others  that  they  bleed  and  die, 
and  these  men  who  are  styled  the  lords  of  earth  cannot  call  a  single 
clod  their  own." 

Can  there  be  a  better  education  to  prepare  us  for  the  great 
social  struggles  of  the  present  than  the  study  of  this  period  of 
Graeco-Roman  civilization,  where  we  can  observe  on  a  limited  stage, 
in  the  simplest  thoroughly  comprehensible  form,  clear-cut  as  stat- 
uary, because  in  perfect  openness  and  unrestraint,  the  factors  and 
forces  develop  and  work  out  their  logical  destiny,  knowledge  and 
appreciation  of  which  in  the  field  of  the  state  and  society  is  the 
prerequisite  of  all  political  education?  How  much  easier  it  is  to 
observe  the  causal  relations  in  these  fields,  whose  smaller  size  and 
less  complicated  constitution  allowed  forces  to  play  in  the  quicker 
interchange  of  action  and  reaction,  and  so  shortened  the  length  of 
time  which  elapses  between  cause  and  effect  in  comparison  with 
the  vast  and  cumbrous  states  of  modern  society.  The  transforma- 
tion of  political  into  social  parties,  which  has  only  fairly  begun 
nowadays  and  has  not  yet  penetrated  the  whole  of  society,  the 
wresting  of  the  lawmaking,  the  law-enforcing  and  the  law-inter- 
preting functions  of  the  state  to  subserve  the  interests  of  a  social 
class,  these  tendencies,  which  are  in  their  incipiency  in  European 
and  American  civilization,  were  in  that  ancient  world,  with  an  im- 
pressive disregard  of  immediate  consequences  which  characterized 
especially  the  Hellenic  spirit,  carried  to  their  extremest  logical  con- 


18  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

elusions,  and  that,  too,  not  in  a  few  years,  but  during  a  develop- 
ment which  covered  centuries  and  under  the  most  diversified  types 
of  social  organization  that  the  world  has  ever  had  to  show — aris- 
tocracy, oligarchy,  plutocracy,  democracy,  republicanism,  repre- 
sentative government,  constitutional  monarchy,  absolutism  with  its 
attendant  bureaucracy,  and  all  conceivable  combinations  of  polities, 
monarchical,  aristocratic  and  democratic  in  mixed  and  varied  pro- 
portions. The  result  was  everywhere  one  and  the  same,  the  disin- 
tegration of  society  into  mutually  antagonistic  social  classes,  whose 
violent  struggles  brought  in  a  military  dictatorship,  under  whose 
crushing  weight  the  whole  of  ancient  culture  and  civilization  sank 
finally  to  the  ground. 


SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Note: — The  purpose  of  these  articles  is  primarily  to  render  accessible 
to  an  English  speaking  public  the  results  of  the  best  foreign  scholarship 
of  the  last  few  decades.  In  so  doing  I  follow,  often  very  closely,  the  truly 
epoch-making  writings  of  my  former  teacher,  Professor  Robert 
Pohlmann,  of  the  University  of  Munich.  Of  his  two  great  works,  "Aus 
Altertum  und  Gegenwart,"  collected  essays  on  the  Social  Aspects  of  An- 
tiquity, appeared  in  1896;  the  first  volume  of  his  "Geschichte  des  antiken 
Kommunismus  und  Sozialismus"  in  1893,  the  second  in  1901,  Other  works 
of  a  general  nature  and  of  exceptional  merit  are: 
Eduard  Meyer:    Die   wirtschaftliche  Entwickelung   des   Altertums,    Jena   1895, 

also    in    Conrad's    Jahrbucher    fur    Nationalokonomik    und    Statistik,    Ser. 

Ill,   vol.   9,   1895,  p.   696   ff. 
G.   Salvioli:     Le  capitalisme  dans  le  monde  antique.     Paris,   1906. 

The  following  may  also  be  mentioned: 
G.    Adler:     Sozialreform   im   Altertum;    Conrad's    Handworterbuch   der    Staats- 

wissenschaften;   Supplementband  II,   1897,  p.   694   ff. 
M.    Weber:     Die    sozialen    Griinde    des    Untergangs    der    antiken    Kultur.     Die 

Wahrheit,   vol.   VI,   p.    65   ff. 
Cognetti  de  Martiis:      II   Socialismo  Antico.     Turin   1887. 
P.    Guiraud:      De    l'importance    des    questions    economiques    dans    l'antiquite. 

Revue  internationale  de  l'enseignment,  vol.  VIII,  p.  225  ff. 
Herter:      Die   sociale   Frage   des   griechisch-romischen   Altertums.      Correspon- 

denzblatt    fur    die    Gelehrten    und   Realschulen    Wurttemburgs,    9    and    10, 

1882,  p.    373   ff. 
U.   Pestalozzi:      La  Vita  economica  dalla  fine  del   secolo  VII   alia  fine   del   IV 

secolo  avanti  Cristo.     Milan    1901. 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  19 

An   Economic   Interpretation   of 
American  History 

By  A.  M.  Simons. 


EIGHTH  ARTICLE 

Industrial  Conditions  at  the  Beginning  of  the  American 
Government 

[EDITORIAL  NOTE — This  series  of  papers,  which  gives  a 
view  of  United  States  history  not  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  school 
histories,  began  in  the  December,  1908,  number  of  this  periodical. 
The  first  volume  of  the  Progressive  Journal,  containing  the  first 
seven  of  the  articles,  can  be  furnished  either  bound  or  unbound.] 

At  the  birth  of  the  United  States  government  in  1789  there  was 
little  industrial  foundation  for  national  solidarity.  The  ruling 
classes  of  the  different  states  had  been  brought  together  by  the 
common  fear  of  a  proletarian  uprising  and  the  common  need  for  a 
central  government  for  the  furtherance  of  a  few  immediate  inter- 
ests. It  was  easily  possible  that  another  decade  might  see  these 
interests  so  divergent  that  the  central  government  would  fall  to 
pieces  of  its  own  weight.  The  only  thing  that  could  prevent  this 
was  the  growth  of  a  national  industrial  life. 

The  foundation  of  any  general  industrial  solidarity  must  be 
looked  for  in  the  conditions  of  communication.  The  method  of 
transporting  goods  determines  the  extent  of  the  market,  and  in  any 
industrial  stage  the  size  of  the  market,  for  the  great  staples  will 
have  much  to  do  with  determining  the  extent  of  the  political  unit. 
When  Washington  took  the  presidential  chair  transportation  in  the 
United  States  was  but  little  different  from  what  it  was  in  Rome 
when  she  was  mistress  of  the  known  world.  If  any  advantage  ex- 
isted it  was  in  favor  of  the  earlier  civilization,  for  the  Roman  com- 
merce of  Caesar  moved  over  highways  whose  very  ruins  are  the 
wonder  and  admiration  of  modern  engineers,  while  American  com- 
merce in  Washington's  day  was  painfully  dragged  over  corduroy 
roads,  through  nnbridged  rivers  and  morasses  of  mud,  that  made 
any  extensive  profitable  interchange  of  goods  over  long  distances 
unthinkable.  It  was  less  expensive  to  exchange  goods  between 
Massachusetts  and  China  than  between  Boston  and  Tennessee. 

The  arrangements  for  the  transmission  of  intelligence  were 
little  more  effective  than  for  the  carrying  of  merchandise.  When 
independence  was  declared  there  were  but  twenty-eight  .postoffices 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  thirteen  colonies.     Fourteen  years  later, 


20  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

in  the  second  year  of  Washington's  first  term,  when  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  new  government  was  fairly  under  way,  there  were 
still  but  seventy-five.    Yet  the  population  was  over  three  million. 

The  rates  of  postage  were  so  high  as  to  be  almost  prohibitive. 
For  a  single  sheet  of  paper  going  less  than  thirty  miles,  the  rate 
was  six  cents.  From  this  point  the  postage  rapidly  rose,  until  to 
send  a  single  sheet  more  than  450  miles  cost  twenty-five  cents. 

Four-fifths  of  the  population  were  engaged  in  agriculture;  or 
perhaps  it  would  be  more  nearly  correct  to  say  that  what  was  then 
considered  agriculture  embraced  four-fifths  of  the  industrial  life. 
These  farmers  harvested  their  grain  with  sickles  like  those  Ruth 
saw  in  the  fields  of  Boaz.  They  threshed  their  grain  with  a  flail, 
such  as  their  Aryan  ancestors  brought  from  the  plains  of  Central 
Asia  when  they  set  out  upon  that  long  westward  march,  of  which 
the  colonization  of  America  was  the  latest  and  longest  step.  Al- 
though Jefferson  was  engaged  in  the  first  attempt  ever  made  to 
mathematically  calculate  the  form  of  a  plow  which  should  do  its 
work  with  the  least  expenditure  of  energy,  two  generations  were  to 
pass  away  before  plows  constructed  on  scientific  principles  were  to 
be  found  on  American  farms. 

Cattle,  horses,  hogs  and  sheep  were  of  a  character  that  no 
modern  farmer  would  permit  to  encumber  his  fields.  Cattle  were 
kept  almost  exclusively  for  their  hides  and  as  draft  animals, 
although  here  and  there  in  New  England  some  butter  and  cheese 
were  made.  They  were  seldom  stabled  or  fed,  and  winter  swept 
them  away  with  epidemics  of  "hollow  horn."  Although  Messenger, 
the  founder  of  the  American  Hambletonian  trotting  horse,  was  im- 
ported in  1788,  and  Justin  Morgan,  the  sire  of  the  once  famous 
Morgan  horses,  was  born  in  1793,  yet  as  a  whole  the  horses  of  the 
United  States  were  insignificant  in  numbers  and  character.  Con- 
siderable effort  had  been  made  to  improve  the  breed  of  sheep,  be- 
cause of  the  pressing  need  of  a  domestic  supply  of  wool  for  weav- 
ing. Several  states  had  passed  laws  to  encourage  sheep-breeding 
and  forbidding  their  slaughter  for  food,  while  the  first  Merinos 
were  imported  in  1793. 

Nor  did  manufactures  show  many  signs  of  improvement  over 
the  methods  which  had  been  in  vogue  for  centuries.  In  England 
the  Industrial  Revolution  was  in  full  swing.  But  England  was 
jealously  guarding  the  mechanical  secrets  that  were  fast  making 
her  the  industrial  mistress  of  the  world.  In  spite  of  this,  the  very 
same  year  that  the  political  machinery  of  the  United  States  govern- 
ment was  first  set  in  motion,  Samuel  Slater  landed  in  America  from 
England,  carrying  in  his  head  the  plans  of  the  new  machinery  for 
weaving  and  spinning.  One  year  later  the  first  cotton  mill  in  the 
New  World  was  started  at  Pawtucket,  Rhode  Island. 

Until  the  establishment  of  this  factory  only  woolen  cloth  had 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  21 

been  made  in  the  United  States,  and  this  was  produced  almost  ex- 
clusively in  the  households  of  the  farmers  and  village  workers. 
Here  and  there  the  looms  were  being  gathered  into  factories.  The 
processes  of  carding  and  spinning  were  even  further  along  on  the 
road  toward  the  factory  stage.  The  Revolution,  like  every  war, 
had  acted  like  a  hotbed  in  forcing  the  growth  of  such  budding  in- 
dustries as  supplied  army  contracts.  The  demand  for  uniforms  and 
blankets  tended  especially  to  push  the  weaving  industry  along  the 
road  towards  the  factory  system. 

Iron  and  steel  were  produced  by  methods  that  would  not  have 
seemed  strange  to  the  ancient  artificers  who  prepared  the  materials 
for  the  metal  workers  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But  the  stacks  were 
growing  larger;  the  "puddling"  methods  of  producing  steel  had 
just  been  invented,  and  in  general  this  industry,  like  all  others, 
showed  signs  of  the  coming  change. 

In  thousands  of  New  England  homes  were  to  be  found  the 
miniature  forges  and  anvils  around  which  the  farmer  and  his  fam- 
ily, including  young  children,  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  nails. 
Jeremiah  Wilkinson's  machine  for  making  cut  nails  was  invented 
the  year  before  the  signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  but 
it  had  not  as  yet  found  its  way  into  the  world  of  industry. 

The  shoemaking  industry  had  already  begun  to  concentrate  in 
the  Massachusetts  cities,  where  it  is  now  located.  The  tools  of  the 
trade  were  still  the  lapstone,  last,  awl  and  waxed-end — as  they  had 
been  for  a  thousand  years  and  more. 

While,  superficially,  industry  seemed  to  be  sleeping  the  sleep 
which  it  had  slept  for  centuries,  signs  of  awakening  were  evident 
on  every  hand.  Shipbuilding  and  commerce  had  already  reached 
the  stage  of  great  industries.  The  ships  of  New  England  were 
turning  watery  furrows  in  every  corner  of  the  ocean,  while  her 
merchants  were  among  the  most  powerful  in  the  world.  It  was  the 
owners  of  these  industries  who  were  accumulating  the  capital 
which,  invested  in  the  machinery  of  the  Industrial  Revolution,  was 
destined,  a  generation  later,  to  change  the  whole  face  of  social  life. 

Moreover,  this  machinery  was  everywhere  making  its  rude  be- 
ginnings. In  England  inventions  for  the  production  of  power  and 
its  application  to  spinning,  carding  and  weaving,  were  already  ap- 
proaching completion.  In  1790  Fitch's  steamboat  was  making  reg- 
ular trips  up  and  down  the  Delaware.  But  he  was  still  looked  upon 
as  a  half-insane  crank,  and  was  destined  to  reap  the  usual  reward 
which  the  competitive  system  bestows  upon  those  who  perform 
great  social  services,  while  another  man  and  generation  were  to 
utilize  his  ideas  and  reap  the  benefit  of  his  genius. 

In  transportation  a  perfect  mania  for  turnpikes  and  canals  was 
raging.  Nearly  every  state  had  from  one  to  a  dozen  such  projects 
under  construction — or  discussion.    The  stock  of  turnpike  and  canal 


22  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

companies  rivaled  the  certificates  of  the  public  debt  as  a  medium  for 
speculative  gambling. 

Population  had  begun  to  move  over  the  Alleghenies  at  a  rapid 
rate.  The  western  settlements  were  still  largely  confined  to  Ken- 
tucky and  Tennessee,  and  contained  few  settlers  from  any  of  the 
northern  states.  The  wealth,  population  and  apparent  industrial 
strength  of  the  northern  and  southern  states  were  almost  exactly 
equal  at  this  time,  with  the  advantages,  if  at  all,  with  the  south. 

Tobacco  was  still  the  principal  southern  crop.  Cotton  was  as 
yet  ginned  by  hand,  making  it  unprofitable  to  raise  anywhere,  save 
in  the  tidewater  region.  We  are  not  surprised  to  learn,  therefore, 
that  there  was  a  strong  abolition  sentiment  throughout  Virginia  and 
Maryland,  where  the  tobacco  plantations  were  scarcely  worth  work- 
ing and  where  slaves  seldom  brought  more  than  a  couple  of  hun- 
dred dollars. 

This  was  the  industrial  situation  when  George  Washington 
became  the  first  president  of  the  United  States.  We  shall  see,  in 
the  next  paper  of  this  series,  how  these  conditions  expressed  them- 
selves politically,  and  how  political  conditions  were  used  to  further 
certain  phases  of  industrial  development. 


EDITORIAL 


By  PEYTON  BOSWELL 

A  CRISIS  IN  EDUCATION 

It  is  generally  accepted  by  all  concerned  that  the  United  States 
is  in  the  midst  of  a  revolution  in  education ;  that  the  obsolete  sys- 
tem that  has  projected  itself  down  for  so  many  years  from  a  pre- 
vious social  stage  into  present  industrial  society  is  scheduled  now  to 
go ;  that  the  new  educational  system  must  conform  with  the 
demands  of  the  new  industrial  society  that  has  developed  in  the  last 
fifty  years  in  this  country.  That  this  change  is  coming — is  even 
now  in  process — there  is  almost  unanimity  of  opinion  among  edu- 
cators, among  industrial  captains,  and  among  the  masses. 

So  far,  so  good:  education  must  be  made  to  conform  with  the 
demands  of  modern  society.  But  there  is  more  than  one  demand; 
in  fact,  there  are  two  distinctly  antagonistic  demands  With  which 
shall  the  new  education  conform? 

What  are  these  two  antagonistic  demands  of  industrial  society? 

First — the  BUSINESS  demand,  which  requires  that  the  pupil 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  23 

be  equipped  in  school  as  a  perfect  machine  to  lake  a  certain  place  in 
the  manufacture  and  sale  of  goods,  and  that  all  other  forms  of  edu- 
cation that  might  tend  to  make  him  less  obedient  to  the  requirements 
of  trade  be  dispensed  with. 

Second — the  SOCIAL  demand,  which  requires  that,  while  the 
pupil  must  be  equipped  to  perform  effectively  his  share  of  the 
world's  work  in  some  specified  department  of  activity,  he  shall  also 
be  so  educated  that  he  will  become  a  thinking,  cognizant  unit  in 
society,  capable  of  understanding  society  and  helping  to  guide  its 
destinies. 

If  the  first  demand  triumphs,  it  is  inevitable  that  social  stagna- 
tion will  result;  that  society  will  become  permanently  stratified — 
one  class  owning  and  managing  the  earth,  the  other  class  doing  the 
work,  with  the  sole  ambition  of  working  and  being  fed. 

If  the  second  demand  triumphs,  a  thinking  working  class  will 
see  to  it  that  social  evolution  is  not  impeded,  that  the  interests  of 
the  whole  people  are  conserved  and  that  industry  becomes  more 
and  more  democratized,  to  the  end  that  mankind  may  be  happier 
and  healthier  and  wiser. 

It  is  by  no  means  certain  which  form  of  the  new  education 
will  win.  The  business  demand  is  championed  by  the  class  which 
now  completely  rules  society,  which  possesses  the  powers  of  gov- 
ernment— legislative,  administrative  and  judicial — and  also  the  pow- 
ers (to  a  more  or  less  extent)  of  the  press  and  of  the  pulpit.  If 
the  social  demand  triumphs,  the  educational  system  will  have  to  be 
literally  wrested  away  from  the  capitalist  class. 

The  fighters  on  the  side  of  progress  in  this  momentous  conflict, 
on  the  outcome  of  which  the  very  form  of  future  civilization  de- 
pends, will  have  to  be  the  educators  of  the  country  and  the  toiling 
masses.  These  two  forces,  working  together,  can  triumph.  The 
future  depends  upon  what  they  do. 

It  is  this  conflict  that  has  called  the  Progressive  Journal  of 
Education  into  existence.  It  is  important  that  its  message  reach 
both  educators  and  masses  alike. 


SOME  CURRENT  HISTORY 

Two  events  now  transpiring  in  different  quarters  of  the  globe 
form  excellent  topics  wherein  the  progressive  teacher  may  lead  ad- 
vanced pupils  to  know  something  concerning  the  nature  of  modern 
society  and  the  direction  which  its  tendencies  are  taking.  We  refer 
to  the  Spanish  war  in  Morocco  and  to  the  general  strike  in  Sweden. 
These  subjects  will  be  considered  here,  one  after  the  other,  but  no 
effort  will  be  made  to  do  more  than  barely  outline  each. 

Of  course,  the  progressive  teacher  has  already  made  his  class 


24  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

understand  that  historical  events  in  the  main  have  their  causes  in 
economic  fact;  that  national  movements  of  conquest  are  due  to  the 
desire  of  the  ruling  class  of  a  nation  to  gain  material  things,  and 
that  all  history  has  mainly  to  do  with  the  struggle  between  classes 
— either  between  the  ruling  classes  of  rival  countries  or  between 
the  ruling  class  of  a  country  and  its  own  lower  or  subjected  classes — 
in  short,  that  a  nation's  history  is  the  history  of  the  struggles  of 
its  classes. 

The  Spanish  war  in  Morocco  is  a  fair  illustration  of  how  the 
ruling  class  of  a  nation  makes  history  by  fighting  another  in  order 
to  gain  wealth.  Spanish  capitalists  had  formed  a  company  to  ex- 
ploit the  mines  in  the  mountains  which  lie  back  a  few  miles  from 
the  Moorish  coast.  This  company  started  to  build  a  railway  from 
Melilla,  on  the  coast,  to  these  mountains.  The  Moors  objected  to 
this  intrusion  in  their  ancient  country.  Armed  forces  gathered  to 
destroy  the  railway.  Immediately  the  Spanish  government,  at  the 
request  of  its  ruling  class,  the  capitalists,  sent  a  large  army  to  de- 
feat the  Moors  and  to  silence  their  objections. 

But  there  was  an  antagonism  between  classes  in  Spain 
itself — between  the  class  of  rich  capitalists  and  aristocrats,  who 
controlled  the  government,  and  the  class  of  industrial  toilers,  who 
created  all  wealth  and  who  had  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  Moroccan 
campaign — either  in  blood  or  toil. 

Manifestly  the  Moroccan  war  was  against  the  interests  of  this 
class  of  toilers,  so  in  Catalonia  and  other  northern  provinces  they 
rebelled.  The  master  class  had  all  the  advantage,  so  the  uprising 
was  quickly  crushed  and  the  Moroccan  war  went  on  to  a  successful 
conclusion. 

The  Swedish  general  strike  illustrates  a  vastly  more  important 
phase  of  the  struggle  between  classes  which  is  making  history  at  the 
present  time,  being  as  it  was  a  part  of  the  world-wide  conflict  be- 
tween the  two  classes  into  which  industrial  society  everywhere  has 
divided  itself — the  possessing,  or  capitalist  class,  and  the  non-pos- 
sessing, or  working  class. 

Sweden  is  a  poor  country  at  the  best — the  conflict  between 
Man  and  Nature  in  the  production  of  wealth  still  being  acute — so 
that  the  workers,  of  the  country  have  a  hard  time  producing  a  suf- 
ficient amount  to  enrich  the  possessing  class  and  leave  enough  for 
self-support.  Perhaps  on  account  of  the  acuteness  of  this  conflict 
the  working  class  of  Sweden  is  better  organized  than  in  any  other 
country.  Of  late  years,  through  their  trade  unions,  the  workers 
have  been  able  seriously  to  embarrass  their  masters,  forcing  them 
to  give  back  more  and  more  of  the  fruits  of  toil.  But  the  coming 
of  the  world-wide  industrial  depression  gave  the  employers  a  chance 
to  strike  a  crushing  blow  at  the  unions.  On  account  of  the  wide- 
spread unemployment  which  followed  the  panic,  the  working  class 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  25 

was  placed  still  nearer  to  starvation  and  its  power  to  resist  oppres- 
sion greatly  lessened.  Then  came  blow  after  blow  at  the  unions, 
ending  finally  in  the  general  lockout.  The  workers  retaliated  by  the 
general  strike. 

Now  comes  the  really  significant  fact.  No  sooner  had  the 
plight  of  their  Swedish  brothers  been  made  known  than  the  work- 
ing classes  of  all  the  other  industrial  countries  began  to  send  funds 
to  their  aid.  Thousands  of  dollars  began  to  pour  in  from  Den- 
mark, Norway,  Germany,  France,  England,  Austria,  Italy,  the( 
United  States  and  even  Russia  and  down-trodden  Finland.  The 
toilers  of  the  whole  world  had  become  conscious  of  their  mutual 
interest  and  of  the  necessity  of  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  the 
great  conflict. 

This  is  of  tremendous  significance.  It  means  that  the  work- 
ing class  of  the  world  is  getting  ready  to  make  itself  the  ruling  class, 
and  that  it  is  acquiring  the  intelligence  and  the  spirit  of  solidarity 
necessary  to  accomplish  this  result. 

But  the  working  class  can  make  itself  the  dominant  class  only 
by  abolishing  the  other  class — that  is,  by  taking  over  and  itself  pos- 
sessing through  public  ownership  the  vast  properties  for  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth  which  are  now  in  the  hands  of  the  capitalist  class. 
And  this  is  exactly  the  ultimate  program  asserted  by  the  Swedish 
workers. 

The  teacher  who  can  make  his  advanced  pupils  understand  just 
what  the  world  and  its  problems  really  are  will  be  doing  the  great- 
est possible  service  to  society. 


Medical  Inspection  in  Public 
Schools 

By  Louis  W.  Rapeer, 
Professor  of  Education,  University  of  Washington,  Seattle. 

Medical  inspection  in  the  public  schools  rests  solidly  upon  two 
great  phases  of  progress  of  the  last  half  century — the  revolution  of 
medicine  from  a  kind  of  semi-quackery  to  that  of  an  all-important 
and  established  science,  and  the  change  from  the  man  to  the  ma- 
chine in  industry  with  the  consequent  unparalleled  growth  of  large 
cities.  Of  course,  other  influences  have  been  potent,  such  as  the 
evolution  of  modern  child-psychology  and  sociology,  but  the  two 
above  mentioned  are  basic. 

We  Americans  have  become  so  used  to  change  and  almost 
magical  progress  along  certain  lines  that  we  should  have  little  sur- 
prise if  communication  with  Mars  were  some  day  established  or 


26  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

the  propulsion  of  a  great  ship  around  the  world  with  a  gram  of 
radium  were  accomplished ;  we  do  not  keep  track  of  progress  made 
in  our  efforts  to  accomplish  further  development.  But  many  peo- 
ple can  recall,  on  occasion,  the  time  when  night  air  was  consid- 
ered dangerous ;  when  tuberculosis  was  considered  an  inherited 
malady ;  when  spinal  curvature  was  said  to  be  "due  to  a  fall" ; 
when  deaf  children  were  considered  stubborn  and  willful,  and  the 
child  of  defective  vision  or  the  one  suffering  from  a  lack  of  air 
due  to  enlarged  tonsils  or  adenoids  was  made  to  wear  the  dunce 
cap  or  "stay  in  after  school,"  if  nothing  worse ;  when  measles  and 
scarlet  fever  were  "diseases  every  child  should  have" ;  when  diph- 
theria was  a  kind  of  quinsy  or  croup ;  when  germs  were  practically 
an  unknown  mystery,  and  when  physicians  were  merely  for  the 
purpose  of  curing  or  exorcising  existing  disease  and  not  to  pre- 
vent it. 

Since  1880  practically  all  of  this  ignorance  and  awesome  mys- 
tery suggested  above  has  been  swept  into  the  rubbish  heap  of  the 
past.  Today  in  medicine  there  is  "a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth." 
For  in  these  years  Koch  has  discovered  the  bacillus  of  tuberculosis ; 
Ebereth,  the  organism  of  typhoid  fever ;  Klebs,  the  bacillus  of 
diphtheria ;  Kitasarto,  the  bacillus  of  tetanus ;  Lavarin,  that  fever 
came  not  from  "night  air,"  but  from  the  bills  of  ubiquitous  mos- 
quitoes ;  Fehleisen,  the  streptococcus  of  erysipelas ;  and  Pasteur, 
with  hundreds  of  other  scientists  down  to  those  of  the  Rockefeller 
Institute,  have  laid  bare  the  secrets  of  health  and  disease  that  have 
baffled  the  ages.  Recently,  a  consecrated  army  physician  has  even 
discovered  that  a  very  large  majority  of  the  "poor,  no-account 
white  trash"  of  the  South  are  what  they  are  because  of  the  debili- 
tating effects  of  the  "hook  worm."  Thus  even  what  has  long  been 
termed  "laziness"  and  "shiftlessness"  in  these  people  is  coming 
within  the  influence  of  curative  and  preventive  medicine. 

This  new  knowledge  coming  to  the  schools  has  created 
the  science  of  school  hygiene,  a  tremendously  important  science 
having  directly  to  do  with  the  welfare,  efficiency  and  happiness  of 
future  generations.  Ventilation,  exercise,  playgrounds,  heating, 
lighting,  cleaning,  adjusting  school  seats,  number  of  hours  of  study 
and  their  proper  distribution,  the  need  of  physical  work,  defects  of 
sight,  hearing,  breathing,  feeding  and  clothing;  in  all  these  par- 
ticulars and  many  more  the  schools  of  the  past  have  been  found 
inadequate,  and  the  physician's  knowledge  and  skill  necessary  to 
remedy.  Progressive  normal  schools  have  begun  systematic  in- 
struction for  actual  or  intending  teachers  in  the  elements  of  personal 
and  municipal  health,  children's  diseases  and  defects,  body  training, 
and  all  the  essentials  of  school  hygiene.  And  soon  all  American 
teachers  will  be  examined  as  much  upon  their  knowledge  of  how 
to  prevent  the  deaths  of  our  hundred  thousand  school  children  who 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  27 

perish  each  year  as  upon  their  knowledge  of  how  to  prevent 
twelve-year-old  children  from  failing  in  examinations  on  the  sub- 
junctive mood  or  cube  root. 

Increase  of  medical  knowledge  has  made  possible  a  tremendous 
improvement  in  the  prevention  of  death,  disease,  retardation  and 
wasted  lives  among  school  children;  but  it  has  been  the  concentra- 
tion of  millions  of  people  in  our  congested  cities  that  has  forced  the 
application  of  this  knowledge  to  actual  school  conditions.  The 
wonderful  inventive  genius  of  the  Yankee  has  turned  the  world 
upside  down.  The  old  isolated  and  individualistic  life  has  passed 
away.  Wonderful  machines  for  transportation,  communication, 
manufacture,  agriculture,  and  even  recreation,  along  with  com- 
bines, corporations,  specialization  and  infinite  division  of  labor,  have 
made  possible  these  city  conditions ;  and  today  we  have  half  of  our 
population,  and  east  of  the  Alleghenies  about  three-fourths*  of  our 
American  population  living  in  these  unnatural  conditions.  And  to 
complicate  matters,  we  have  millions  of  immigrants,  ignorant  of  all 
laws  of  health  and  destitute  of  modern  ideals  crowding  into  the 
already  overcrowded  cities,  and,  "like  worms  in  a  knot,"  creating 
our  slums. 

This  is  the  problem  of  the  school :  to  develop  into  social  effi- 
ciency in  these  conditions  and  with  present  knowledge  the  future 
American  people.  Not  one  city  has  been  built  with  the  children  in 
mind — even  the  streets  are  not  left  long  for  play — but  all  have 
been  built  by  business  for  business.  It  is  now  time  that  the  in- 
ventive Yankee  and  the  new  American  turn  some  of  their  frenzied 
energies  and  genius  into  making  the  city  a  place  in  which  people 
(and  children)  may  live  as  well  as  do  business. 

In  the  school,  medical  inspection  will  be  the  beginning,  the 
entering  wedge,  of  this  new  movement  toward  making  the  cities 
inhabitable  and  men  healthier.  Of  course,  this  is  a  semi-socialistic 
movement,  but  the  zvhole  tendency  of  modern  education  is  semi- 
socialistic.  The  school  itself  is  our  most  socialized  institution ;  and 
the  school  is  the  only  institution  by  which  the  new  knowledge  for 
the  new  conditions  may  be  thoroughly  popularized,  made  a  part  of 
the  common  people's  thought  and  habits  of  living*.  And  further- 
more, the  school  is  the  only  institution  which  amalgamates  all  races, 
sects,  traditions  and  "'previous  conditions  of  servitude"  into  the 
new  American.  It  is  the  only  institution  in  which  the  people  as  a 
whole  have  implicit  confidence,  amounting  almost  to  a  fetich.  Says 
John  Dewey,  the  great  prophet  of  modern  education : 

"Education  is  the  one  thing  in  which  the  American  people  be- 
lieve without  reserve,  and  to  which  they  are  without  reserve  com- 
mitted.    Indeed,  I  sometimes  think  that  the  necessity  of  education 


*New   York   is   72  per  cent   urban,   Illinois   54   per  cent,    Massachusetts   91 
per  cent,   and  Rhode  Island  95  per  cent. 


28  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

is  the  only  settled  article  in  the  shifting  and  confused  social  and 
moral  creed  of  America." 

If  the  workingmen  of  America  wish  to  promote  the  spread  of 
the  benefits  of  public  education  among  themselves  and  all  the  peo- 
ple they  will  do  well  to  see  to  the  establishment  in  every  school 
system  of  a  department  of  school  hygiene  including  medical  inspec- 
tion. It  is  not  a  fad,  but  a  social  movement  for  human  better- 
ment. 

In  the  June  number  of  this  periodical  we  spoke  of  how  the 
playground  movement  is  sweeping  the  country  and  even  the  world. 
But  medical  inspection  is  more  fundamental,  broader;  and  medical 
inspection  quickly  shows  the  need  for  play,  recreation  and  directed 
physical  work  like  manual  training  and  domestic  science.  It  has 
preceded  the  playground  movement  by  several  years,  although  it 
was  shunted  off  the  educational  path  in  many  systems  by  making  it 
a  part  of  the  duties  of  the  health  departments  and  so  dividing  re- 
sponsibilities and  bringing  in  bad  politics. 

Medical  inspection  of  this  form  was  established  in  Boston  in 
1890;  in  Philadelphia,  1892;  Chicago,  1896;  New  York,  1897. 
Since,  it  has  spread  to  a  great  many  smaller  cities  of  the  country. 

The  agitation  for  medical  inspection  began  in  Europe  as  early 
as  1830.  Since  then  school  physicians  have  been  appointed  in  many 
cities  of  France,  Holland,  Sweden,  Belgium,  Germany  and  Aus- 
tria, and  have  been  doing  good  work  even  in  Egypt,  Japan,  Argen- 
tina, Russia  and  many  other  countries.  It  has  progressed  very 
slowly  in  the  United  States  under  the  pressure  of  the  two  forces 
mentioned  above,  but  bids  fair  to  become  soon  the  most  powerful 
means  of  combating  disease  and  degeneracy,'  and  of  raising  the 
national  standard  of  mental  and  manual  efficiency  and  skill. 

To  show  the  scope  of  the  movement  of  which  medical  inspec- 
tion (or  medical  supervision,  as  it  is  perhaps  better  called  when 
under  direction  of  the  public  school  system  and  vitally  connected 
with  educational  procedure)  is  a  part  we  can  do  no  better  than 
quote  Professor  Snedden's  statement  of  the  work  of  a  department 
of  physical  education: 

"The  work  of  such  a  department  should  embrace  at  least  the 
following  lines:  (a)  Inspection  for  contagious  diseases  and  fixing 
of  quarantine.  This  work  now  performed  by  the  board  of  health 
might  still  be  retained  by  it,  or,  if  transferred,  should  require  clos- 
est co-operation  with  the  board  of  health,  for  in  this  respect  the 
entire  community  is  immediately  concerned,  (b)  Examinations  of 
school  children  for  defects  and  procuring  remedies  therefor. 
Glasses,  surgical  operations,  etc.,  should  be  required  of  parents 
unless  these  could  show  inability  to  provide  the  same,  in  which 
case  the  community  must  bear  the  expense;  and  the  enforcement 
of  the  doctor's  prescriptions  requires  the  school  nurse,     (c)   Med- 


The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education  29 

ical  supervision  of  the  conditions  of  school  education,  such  as  fur- 
niture, lighting,  drinking  facilities,  sanitaries,  print  of  books,  hours 
of  instruction,  program  of  work,  methods  of  teachers  (in  so  far  as 
these  react  harmfully  on  children), lunch  rooms, playgrounds,  games, 
etc.  (d)  Supervision  of  teachers  to  the  end  that  these  are  them- 
selves preserved  in  good  physical  condition,  that  their  teaching  ai^d 
control  conform  to  the  requirements  of  hygiene,  and  that  they  are 
equipped  to  impart  necessary  instruction  in  hygiene.  *  *  * 
(e)  Administration  of  games,  physical  exercises  and  special  forms 
of  physical  instruction." 

Such  work  will  soon  be  a  compulsory  part  of  all  good  American 
schools ;  and  the  state  of  Massachusetts  has  paved  the  way  by  mak- 
ing medical  inspection,  with  some  examination,  a  compulsory  fea- 
ture of  all  school  systems.  Boston  has  perhaps  the  best  system  in 
the  country  under  the  supervision  of  the  greatest  leader  of  the 
movement,  Dr.  Thomas  Harrington.  His  free  reports,  as  well  as* 
that  of  Superintendent  Maxwell  of  New  York  City  for  1907,  and 
the  book  by  Dr.  Luther  Gulick  on  "Medical  Inspection  of  Schools," 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  promoter  of  the  social  welfare. 

The  first  twenty  nurses  in  Boston  during  the  first  semester  of 
school  in  1908  reported  the  following  cases  among  the  school  chil- 
dren attended  to: 

"Diseases  of:  ear,  1,492  cases  cared  for;  eye,  6,078  cases  cared 
for,  including  3,649  suffering  from  defective  vision,  of  whom 
1,131  were  corrected  by  oculists;  nose,  2,602  cases,  of  which  1,405 
had  adenoids,  423  of  whom  had  obstructions  removed;  mouth,  1,765 
cases,  including  1,686  who  had  carious  teeth;  throat,  1,695  cases, 
including  683  of  hypertrophied  tonsils,  and  608  of  tonsilitis;  skin, 
10,139  cases,  all  of  which  were  followed  to  their  homes  and  the 
parent  or  guardian  instructed  how  to  care  for  the  same." 

Over  seven  thousand  home  visits  were  made  to  instruct  parents, 
and  hundreds  of  cases  of  malnutrition,  renal  disease,  rachitis,  epi- 
lepsy, chorea,  anemia  and  heart  disease  were  treated.  When  we 
remember  that  on  the  average  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  school 
children  in  our  large  cities  are  of  foreign  parentage,  we  see  the 
great  need  of  medical  inspection,  including  the  home  instructions  of 
the  visiting  nurse.  As  principal  of  a  large  public  school  in  Minne- 
apolis for  several  years,  I  learned  that  the  above  figures  correspond 
to  the  actual  conditions.  In  fact,  I  would  almost  be  willing  to 
guarantee  to  pick  out  in  any  school  room  in  the  country  which  has 
not  had  the  advantage  of  medical  inspection  two  children  whom 
their  teachers  and  parents  find  dull,  continually  suffering  from 
colds  and  ill  health  because  of  adenoids  alone.  So,  if  we  are  citi- 
zens responsive  to  the  needs  of  the  age  and  the  cries  of  the  little 
children,  medical  inspection  will  not  long  be  delayed. 

To  be   brief,   this   discussion   will   be   concluded   with   a    few 


30  The  Progressive  Journal  of  Education 

rather  dogmatic  statements  of  facts  which  seem  to  stand  out  in  re- 
lation to  this  problem  in  the  hope  that  they  will  prevent  wasteful 
experiments  in  the  wrong  direction  and  promote  the  efficiency  of 
the  work : 

1.  Medical  inspection,  or  medical  supervision,  should  be  in 
charge  of  the  board  of  education  and  school  authorities. 

2.  The  need  of  medical  supervision  is  not  confined  to  the  city, 
but  exists  in  the  country  and  small  villages,  but  not  to  so  great  an 
extent.  Like  industrial  education  and  other  phases  of  school  work, 
medical  inspection  will  spread  from  the  cities  to  the  country  schools. 

3.  The  first  step  to  take  in  this  work  after  it  has  been  decided 
upon  is  the  appointment  of  a  competent  director — a  man  who  is 
not  only  a  physician,  a  physical  trainer  and  teacher,  but  a  social 
leader.  Such  a  man  is  hard  to  find  now,  and  when  found  must  be 
paid  a  good  salary,  not  "on  the  same  schedule  with  the  high  school 
teachers,"  as  one  superintendent  recently  proposed,  but  on  the 
schedule  of  the  superintendent  himself  if  possible. 

4.  Teachers  must  be  instructed  in  their  professional  training 
before  and  after  entering  the  service  in  the  laws  of  personal  and 
public  hygiene,  and  in  the  relation  of  medical  supervision  to  public 
welfare.  Any  teacher  can  in  a  week  learn  either  from  clinics  for 
the  purpose  or  from  a  good  medical  text  on  children's  diseases  how 
to  diagnose  defects  of  vision,  hearing,  adenoids,  enlarged  tonsils, 
anemia  and  several  other  diseases,  and  how  to  get  the  parents  to 
have  the  children  treated  after  being  notified. 

5.  The  school  nurses  are  an  almost  indispensable  adjunct  to 
the  school  and  should  be  a  part  of  every  system  of  medical  super- 
vision. They  do  the  work  which  the  teacher  with  her  forty  or  fifty 
children  to  teach  cannot  well  do — make  examinations,  report  cases, 
take  children  to  clinic  or  dispensary,  and  instruct  parents  in  the 
homes. 

6.  The  people  should  be  led  to  feel  a  need  for  medical  super- 
vision in  the  schools  by  a  judicious  use  of  the  newspapers,  circular 
letters,  lectures  at  the  school  and  churches,  exhibits  and  the  like. 
Many  social  experiments  have  failed  because  there  was  not  first 
developed  a  conscious  need  in  the  minds  of  the  people  for  a  change., 

7.  Finally,  the  educators,  especially  our  superintendents  of 
schools,  should  be  more  conscious  of  their  place  as  leaders  of  social 
opinion,  not  follozuers,  and  as  experts  guiding  the  people,  and  not 
entirely  as  politicians  following  the  detailed  instructions  of  laymen. 
Wherever  there  are  real  leaders  with  social  intelligence,  social  re- 
sponsiveness and  social  efficiency,  there  medical  supervision  will 
take  its  proper  place  as  an  educational  agency. 


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